Health and Wellness Archives - Page 4 of 8

More Diet Myths Debunked

January 20, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

Not seeing enough results is apparently a common reason why people give up on their weight loss plan and avoid achieving their weight loss and health goals. This is exactly the mindset you have to change if you want to lose weight and keep it off. Yes keeping the weight off is harder to do than losing weight.

Recent research done by Patricia Bannan, who wrote Eat Right When Time is Tight, claims that “not seeing results soon enough is the number-one reason women give up on their weight loss plans.” That may be the case, but following a lose weight fast strategy is sure to fail in the long run because it misses the point. Diet comes from the Greek word that means manner of living. That means you have to make the way you lose weight become your manner of living, or else you will never keep off the weight. I no longer have to lose weight, but I maintain my ideal weight because I eat in a similar way to how I lost weight.

It really is so simple and yet also confusing. Here is the simple part. The best way to lose weight and I might add be healthy is to eat real food. The hard part is that means you have to go food shopping, cook and put some planning into your meals. There is also lot of misleading information that makes losing weight confusing. You have been told for example to eat whole grains; the problem is there are very little whole grains that qualify as whole. Most have the valuable endosperm taken out to create shelf life and therefore have very little fiber, but lots of carbohydrates.

So the confusing part or the diet myth that needs to be debunked is that losing weight is not just about calories in. Calories matter, but the more important thing is the nutrient makeup of the calorie and how the nutrients are balanced in a meal. If you want more fiber, eat vegetables and you also get protein that balances off the carbohydrates with very little calories.

I understand why people feel that losing weight quickly especially in the beginning is motivating, but that is because they have fallen prey to the number one diet myth which is the word diet itself. Make you so called diet become your manner of living and you will not only lose weight, but you will keep it off. The only other thing I would add to that is exercise. Yes you have to make friends with moving. Find a form of exercise you want to do every day. My favorite is walking out side in nature. What is yours? Watching TV does not qualify.

Does being or feeling overweight sabotage your passion for sex and life?

January 19, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

Notice I said being or feeling, you may not actually be overweight, but you don’t feel like you are thin enough so you don’t feel sexy or like having sex. Research shows that your sex drive, sometimes called libido is related to your confidence levels. Libido is not just limited to sex it also relates to passion for life. Cindy Meston, Ph.D., and director of Sexual Psychophysiology at the University of Texas, determined that the more we compare ourselves to what the fashion world wants us to think is sexy, which is of course thin, the less attractive we feel. It is the comparing that has to go. I would also suggest that women have an unrealistic notion of how much they should weigh, and this sabotages not only your weight loss goals but also according to Dr. Meston’s research your confidence levels.

I think if we asked most guys, they would not think the thin body type is sexy. In fact this has been proven guys like an hour glass shape. It has to do with unconscious thoughts about reproduction and child bearing which persist well beyond the child bearing years. More importantly, I think you would find that more than body type, guys find confidence and an over feeling or being at ease with yourself and others to be sexier than being thin. That’s the problem, if being thin is the benchmark or touchstone for confidence we have it all wrong.

One thing you could do to remedy this is to start exercising. It turns out that exercise makes you not only feel better but gives you more confidence and energy which of course will make you feel sexier. Dr. Meston’s research supports this. According to her research, doing just twenty minutes of cardio in your target heart rate for burning fat increases your sex drive or libido by as much as 150 per cent.

So if you want to feel sexier, more confident and have a more exciting life, stop comparing yourself to a cultural ideal that is not even attractive to most men. Second I would start exercising. Once you do those two things, you will find you eat healthier. Finally being or feeling comfortable in your own skin is a mindset. When you look in the mirror… like what you see back. More than how we look it is the light we have, the energy with which we vibrate that people find attractive. If you want to get a jump start on your confidence, download the hypnosis MP3 I have on my webiste called Unlock Your Potential.

Does losing weight make you happier?

January 18, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

I think most people would think that losing weight makes you happier? The research shows it doesn’t in the long run. Losing weight, just like falling in love or getting a promotion creates a short term bump in happiness but after a while you return back to where you were. Could this be one reason why so many people regain their weight? One question I ask people I coach that is very enlightening is: what do you want by losing weight that you don’t already have? Or what are you hoping that losing weight will do for you? These powerful questions are what lead us to the unresolved issues that need to be worked on so that the weight loss is illusory.

What is also interesting is how much we compare ourselves to other people and how that affects our happiness levels. Nick Powdthavee who wrote the book The Happiness Equation, said: “it feels okay to be fat when our loves ones-or other people with whom we normally identify-are fat as well.” This I found to be very revealing. We live in a thin-obsessed culture. If we are comparing ourselves to celebrities and social expectations, we will be miserable. That is why I suggest you look at your weight goals differently. It’s not about losing weight. Weight gain is often a symptom for something else that is unresolved and the eating is a distraction for those unresolved issues. It is about feeling good. When we feel good emotionally and physically it’s easier to do what we need to do to stay at a healthy weight.

So I learned some other interesting things from The Happiness Equation that we can learn from. Our capacity for happiness just like our weight has a set point to which we continually return. Happiness is a point of view, part of how we see the world. It’s similar to our personality. That is perhaps what really needs to be worked with or else we continually fall back to the place we began. It is kind of like a catch 22: happier people tend to earn more, have more satisfying relationships and even better health. Albert Schweitzer so wisely said: ‘Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.’

I think the answer or the key lies in how we define happiness and how we go about attaining it. The best way I know to increase your happiness set point is to learn how to meditate. It actually is proven to grow new brain cells in the area of the brain that registers happiness. That is why I developed by new meditation program: Smart, Sexy and Sane…meditation made easy. The sooner you begin the better you will feel. Then it becomes easier to guess what…eat healthy and stay fit.

Six tips to improve your body and self- image so you can be happier and healthier

January 17, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

Let’s face it, in this culture how much you weigh is as important as how much you earn. I am not saying I agree with this, but there are things you can do to boost your body and your self- image that might be the key to unlocking your inner power.

Focus on how you feel not how much you weigh. A negative body/self- image colors every aspect of your life. Research shows that long term successful weight loss requires you change the way you see yourself to keep your weight in check. Your weight is not the only thing that defines you. When you eat in a healthy way and do some form of exercise daily you will feel better.
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” This was said by Kahlil Gibran, an inspirational writer and philosopher. People respond to your inner light. So try cultivating inner beauty which has to do with making eye contact, seeing the beauty in another, giving people the gift of your presence and smiling at people even if you do not know them.
Know that you are good enough just as you are even if you have to lose weight. People respond to you in accordance with how you see yourself. Make friends with your “inner critic.”
Become a more interesting person. Take up a new hobby, something you feel passionate about and cut back on the TV time. Haven’t you had enough of reality?
Cultivate self- love and compassion. As hard as it may be to believe, recent research is showing that self-compassion can be your greatest source of strength trumping so called willpower which is based on discipline and negative self-talk. If you are kinder to yourself and treat your set-backs as learning experiences with compassion you will find it easier to change.
Become the observer of you in a non-judgmental way. If you overeat or over indulge, these are distractions that keep us from dealing with what is really going on underneath. Instead of feeling bad because you think you have no self-control, ask yourself what need the action was trying to fill or feed? Acknowledge that perhaps you were looking for happiness or comfort in the wrong place.

If you want to make change easier, be healthier, lose weight successfully or whatever, understand change is a process and has a lot to do with how you see and view yourself than just deploying discipline and willpower. I would also suggest down-loading one of my guided hypnotic meditations such as Unlock your potential. This is a great way to start changing how you think.

Did you ever consider that what you think is as important as what you eat?

December 20, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

The first time I heard the notion that we have an internal dialogue I was surprised. I think that is because I had taken it for granted. My internal dialogue was part of my automatic way of thinking. I never stopped to look at and examine what I was saying to myself, and how my thoughts affected me. Years of meditation have given me a different perspective on this. The first thing you do when you meditate is to look at your internal dialogue. It is like a stream of consciousness and unless you are made aware of it, it just flows on and on. That is why it is called the ‘monkey’ mind or the ‘yenta’ in the mind.

One of the first things I have my clients do is to pay attention to what they may be thinking that brings on or precedes an action they are trying to change. This is obviously not limited to just changing the habit of eating. Let’s say you are trying to start a habit of daily exercise in the morning. You wake up and immediately the conditioned part of your mind is telling you that you don’t feel like it. That is where ‘You’ take over, and start changing the dialogue. If you don’t I guarantee you won’t feel like exercising. Even if you think about something enjoyable like the shower you take after you exercise, that is how simple it is.

Getting in touch with your internal dialogue which can be very automatic and even unconscious to an extent, is your first step to making meaningful change. You cannot change what you do not understand or see. This is another way of saying start becoming aware of the automatic reactions. The point is to have a choice. Some automatic reacting is useful. You don’t have to think about how you drive a car; you can leave that to autopilot. If you want to break or change a habit, whether it is to eat healthier, stop procrastinating or cut back on TV, it’s about creating a balance between autopilot and focus. That is what I think we are looking for.